Show me a school where the power, freedom, and time to learn are in the hands and hearts of the learners--learners being both the kids and the adults--and I'll show you a curious, caring learning community; a thriving school culture!
Bottom line: Until EDUCATORS EXPERIENCE leading their own professional learning, they will have a hard time ceding traditional control of learning to the STUDENTS.
A building of Shiny Happy Teachers, learners on fire, is what every school needs!!

Student-centered, 'student-active' education format as it unfolded today...
1. Invited students to come to the board and write their definitions of soil if they wanted to. Just 'what's in your brain' about it. Read over. Let's find out!

2. Kids set up their own lab sheet with the following: PRE-definition of soil, 9 boxes for drawing 'things' they see or observe in the soil, and POST-definition for soil. (Oops, didn't take a picture of this. Document, document, Laura!)

3. Kids get Magiscopes, tweezers, notecards. Share proper use of a MAGISCOPE, a most wonderful microscope to have in the active classroom. Let kids look at their own fingernails with it (ewww!), at graphite on paper, etc., to practice focusing.

5. Back inside, kids get busy placing our very wet soil onto notecards and then placing the notecards under the magiscopes, FINDING THE ANSWER TO TODAY'S QUESTION, "What is soil made of anyway?" THEIR learning and discovery; not mine.

Cool stuff that happened: They found several worms of different sizes and 2 unidentified grub-like organisms. You'd think they'd just found $100! All kids gathered around these scopes when announcements were made. This inspired one student to look up earthworm info online to settle debate on how many hearts worms have. The kids were excited & relaxed the entire lesson--a look of delight that they got to DO something and find out stuff that wasn't already 'decided' for them. The learning was their own. In addition to insects and worms, they found roots, other plant parts, water, and small rocks/pebbles. I walked around supporting them and joining in their delight and discovery. It was a fantastic day all around.

Tomorrow we will look at DRY soil under the Magiscopes to discover the particle sizes and names (kids will use text or online resources to identify names). The kids will then determine what TYPE of soil we have here in Clay County, MO using these hands-on FUN and MESSY soil tests. They'll never view soil in the same way again. :-)

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About Me

KC Educator & Instructional Coach Turner HS who believes. I work w/passionate people in KC, KS & MO to get education right for kids. Building community & capacity online at #KCedu #KSedchat #MOedchat and face-to-face #EdcampLDR#edcampKC